My heart hurts: yellow diggers are uprooting forty-one humble median trees in San Miguel de Allende this very moment. Well, thirty-eight trees as a few had already been slyly removed over these past few weeks. Where did we go wrong?
Que tristeza.
Photos from earlier today
Since mid-September of this year, locals in this small tourist town have resisted construction work that entailed the trees’ removal to literally pave the way for wider streets for vehicles and a sterile colonial-esque arcade shopping plaza. The city had already slapped mock colonial facades on the buildings along Avenida Guadalupe, now they just needed to remove old roads and medians for the pièce de résistance according to project renderings, an excessively wide two-lane road in which people and trees are completely removed to give full rein to cars. As a token gesture to nature, a few scrawny trees would be planted along the what one can only describe as a highway, making sidewalks that much harder for pedestrians to navigate lest we narrow spacious vehicular lanes.
In a city where the water is too toxic to drink, where brutal homicides are on the rise (the state of Guanajuato had 236 homicides last month versus Mexico City’s 35, GrupoReforma.com), where the divide between rich and poor couldn’t be greater, where every day the city becomes a little less familiar to locals, San Miguel de Allende’s local government is investing insane amounts of money and energy into removing these few dozen median trees. Why? Why can’t officials just respect the community’s wishes, consider the environmental and social benefits of trees, and preserve what little authenticity remains along Avenida Guadalupe? After all, are the people in charge of this project not the same ones who vowed to plant 30,000 trees in SMA a few months ago?
I’m sorry to say I didn’t get involved in the Salvemos 41 Arboles until these past few days. Our nanny Belen, whose family lives in front of the trees and who fought so hard in the middle of the nights to keep construction workers at bay, mentioned the situation to me a few weeks ago and Britt and I visited one evening to see it ourselves. Confident that fierce public outcry and dedicated individuals keeping constant vigil over the trees, not to mention the character the trees give an otherwise lacking street, would convince local authorities to leave the poor trees be, I was confident the situation would end on good terms. But no, SMA mayor Luis Alberto Villarreal García persisted with his plans to clear the street, removing peaceful protesters by force, sending throngs of police to keep people from surrounding the trees, going so far to throw fourteen people in jail. To think, in a place where bloodthirsty criminals barely receive a slap on the hand as punishment, a breastfeeding mother — fighting for the trees on behalf of her children — is capriciously detained and refused release until she breaks down and signs papers saying she won’t return to Avenida Guadalupe. And with so many police — I must have counted a hundred — surrounding a few street trees as if they were protecting Pope Francis himself from a vicious mob of people? What a colossal waste of local government resources, que barbaridad.
Sure, Avenida Guadalupe hasn’t been the most attractive or welcoming street as of late but it had potential to be something truly spectacular. Belen told me this morning that the street trees in question were planted twenty years ago as a streetscaping project by the local government; to realize that project, they had to tear down large shade trees and get rid of benches where people sat and pave the streets for cars where children once played simple games. Belen and I talked about the alternative plans an architect wanted to present to the mayor (who refused to see them) which would have kept the trees and made space for people and included umbrellas and tables for locals to hang out and have a bite to eat, seeing as they’re already priced out of enjoying these simple pleasures in SMA’s centro. And Britt could play with Belen’s nephew in the streets where cars once ruled while we sat in the shade drinking coffee, how lovely would that be? we commented.
It appears that the local government just can’t learn from their past mistakes, although to their credit, they likely believe making the streets more welcoming for cars than people is progress.
So, what’s the moral of this post? I don’t know, the whole situation has left me heartbroken and speechless. There’s so much value in trees it goes without saying, but among them: shade in a world getting hotter and hotter by the day, a place for people to come and sit and relax (hello, who here hasn’t broken down in childhood sobs reading The Giving Tree?), a welcome touch of nature in a city of impervious surfaces. If removing the trees is the solution to the problems of SMA’s mayor, if grossly overlooking citizens is the local government’s approach to urban planning, if violently suppressing innocent people is the job police are tasked with, then what kind of a community are we living in? A tyrannical, dictatorial, unjust, and unsustainable community.
Earlier today I visited the trees as they were being ripped out of the earth. On the walk over, I passed a group of students practicing band, their somber drum beats foreshadowing the slaughter of trees I was about to witness. At the site, groups of police stood around apathetically, people silently recorded videos of trees being lifted crudely by cranes. Watching the trees being shoved into the back of the truck, I started crying. No, sobbing. But I wasn’t upset over the trees, as tragic as the scene unfolding was, I was sad for Britt and the air that she breathes and how lately I’ve been so worried about the air quality in San Miguel de Allende that I’ve considered buying baby-sized face masks for her (turns out they’re largely useless) and remembering how I just read 90% of the world’s children breathe in toxic air every single damn day and was I selfish to become a mother — a role I treasure so dearly — if this is the world I’m bringing her into and if Britt has children how toxic will the air be for that generation of babies and a million other meandering thoughts.
No, San Miguel de Allende, removing trees is not the solution to our urban woes. In fact, removing the trees is opposite of a solution. But will you, or we as a species, learn this in time to reverse the damage we’ve done to the environment and our communities? Let’s hope so. We must do everything in our power to prevent something like this from happening again.